Superbug
by Acaykath
Summary: Taylor snaps under the weight of the bullying when she is shoved into the locker and wishes to to do to her bullies what the bugs are doing to her, causing her shard to manifest differently, then immediately undergoes a secondary trigger in her psychosis acquiring the power she was originally meant to have, leading to far reaching consequences.
Taylor Hebert snapped. That was the only she could explain the feeling. She had always been a good girl and tried to do what was right, but a person could only take so much. Concussed, stuffed into her own locker, surrounded by biological waste, with her breath labored and insects slowly eating her alive, she wished for nothing less than to take Sophia Hess, Emma Barnes, and Madison Clement apart in the most excruciatingly painful manner possible.

Then it happened. It was a vision, incomprehensible, two planets, words, deep, echoing into her very soul, then it was over. She was back in the locker. She was still in the locker. She could feel the bugs eating her, but more than that, she knew exactly what they were doing to her body, the infections leaking into her blood from the biological waste. This new information inspired a second burst of panic and the visions returned, somehow even more striking than the first time. She could now feel the bugs around her and control them. With a thought, they were fused into her flesh to heal her injuries. She could feel the changes made to her corona pollentia, but could tell that it could go further. Using her newly developed powers, she increased her stress chemically and returned herself to a panicked state. If she had to guess, the first ability she had gained was a bio-tinker ability, biological manipulation specializing in bug physiology. The second was a master ability, bug control. If she was correct, she should achieve at least one ability from each class, though no one had ever reported going beyond a second trigger. As her adrenaline increased, the vision appeared again and she realized that they were not planets but massive creatures the size of planets. When the vision ended, she had a new ability, a mover ability to burrow through solid matter. Her shaker power allowed her to use sound waves, from ultra low to ultra high frequency either as blasts or maintained. Her breaker power allowed her to become the size of an insect without losing strength by reducing the empty space between atoms. Her brute ability gave her the ability to lift ten times her body weight like an ant and the resilience of a cockroach. Her blaster power was similar to the Earth-aleph's Spider-Man's web shooter except that they could produce almost any biological substance including a chemical flamethrower courtesy of the bombardier beetle. Her thinker ability was a hive mind, in other words, the more insects she was connected to, the smarter she was. Her striker ability gave her the ability to destroy organic materials, going so far as to create an entire termite den through them. Her shifter ability allowed her to temporarily transform into a swarm of insects. Her trump power enabled her to make herself immune to direct effects such as those used by many strikers, much like radiation shielding. Her stranger ability allowed her to emit pheromones to alter the perceptions of those around her.

With one power from each category, Taylor examined her pollentia and gemma. They were swollen from the rapid evolution, but it looked like one more evolution would join them into a single complete organ. She activated the biological processes to induce another panic attack, ramping it up to the point where she almost had a heart attack. This time, the vision was clear. Powers were not something natural to humanity. They were fragments from a massive planet sized alien, who through some cosmic accident crashed into earth. Her mate Scion was not happy with the way her remains were being treated and would one day wipe out humanity to retrieve them all if something was not done. Scion cared nothing for the survival of humanity, someone else would need to collect the shards in his place. It was a good thing Taylor had recently lost her rather firm grasp on her morals or she might have considered a rather silly approach like trying to fight Scion.

When the vision ended, she could feel that her shard was complete in a way it had never been before. The Manton limit no longer existed for her in any meaningful way as her powers were now fully unlocked. She could feel every insect in the Brockton Bay area and her mind expanded exponentially as she called a swarm into the locker to begin cocooning her. An hour later, another swarm exited the locker and formed into Taylor Hebert. Very few things had changed for her externally, but internally she was a whole new person. She had upgraded her body with a sub-dermal carapace that would take an armor piercing bullet to crack. Her muscles were slightly larger, but much more dense, making them both powerful and quick without being bulky. Her bones and tendons had been sheathed in a carbon lattice that made them nearly impossible to break. Her organs had all been tuned for functionality, ensuring they operated at peak efficiency. Her brain had the most tweaks. She had increased its size and neural density to the maximum, even enlarging her head a few millimeters for the extra processing power. She had reduced her empathy to the point where she would only truly go out of her way to protect friends and family. She had given herself a photographic memory. She had eliminated the ability for emotions to affect her judgment. She still felt them, but they were separate from her actions, allowing her to act rationally despite love, or fear.

Now, the first order of business was to fake her death. She called forth a swarm and formed it into a replica of her own corpse, complete with maggots and flies eating at it. She wondered how long it would take to find.

Her next point of business was a spot of revenge. It was easy enough to find the trio as they cut through a back alley as they did their shopping. Madison and Emma went down to soporific venom in seconds. Sophia dodged two shots then phased through the third. It was now obvious why the teachers ignored everything she did. They knew she was a ward, that she was Shadow Stalker. It wouldn't matter soon.

"I bet you're proud of yourself, now, Shadow Stalker. A villain like you infiltrating the wards, then using their protection to abuse a girl until she becomes an even worse incarnation of Bone Saw."

She tried to hit Taylor, but found herself covered in a swarm of scorpions. That was the end of the fight for her.

Taylor grabbed the three and dragged them into the sewers. She brought them under a park near the center of town and used her striker and mover abilities to excavate a huge cavern in the bedrock. There was a single exit on the surface that was large enough to provide air and allow bugs a rapid response vector. This exit looked like a knot hole in a tree. In order to prevent discovery, though, the primary exit looked like a rat hole in the sewer. The only method for human entry was through abilities such as her burrowing. The entire cavern was built as a living hive. To prevent cave ins, massive arches of chitin and carbon supported the chitin shell of the lair. Unfortunately, this living hive had used up almost a quarter of the insect population of the Brockton bay area, so Taylor ordered that every mature bug was to breed. With that order in place, She made sure with a little tinkering that the three girls wouldn't wake up then went to sleep.

When she woke up, she found that the insect population of Brockton Bay had almost tripled. She called the entirety of the oldest generation down into the hideout. As they began arriving, she began working on what she knew would be her most important creation. She called it the brain queen. It was mad out of part of her flesh as the base and inside its shell was an impossibly large amount of brain matter. The brain queen was, however, essentially brain dead. It needed one more component. Taylor made the necessary adjustments, stuck her head in the brain queen's mouth, and ordered it to consume.

Taylor saw only darkness and pain for a few moments, then she was the brain queen. Admittedly this body wasn't going to be winning any fights since it was more of a turtle than a shark, but its abilities were what made it her current primary body of choice. She spawned a copy of her old body, replacing her original brain with a more insectile brain. Using this puppet, she could use her abilities from a distance and no one would ever know the significance of the brain queen. She used her puppet to transform the heads of the three girls into three brain jar bugs, bugs that look like a large spider with a clear fluid-filled casing in place of their abdomen which held a living brain. She consumed the remainder of the bodies and added them to her brain mass.

Now she was prepared for the next experiment. First she began altering the brains little by little until she found the minimum she needed to chance in order to make them bug-like enough for her to control. She then induced a panic attack, stopping as soon as the pollentia and gemma evolved. She repeated the action until the two fused, then consumed the brain, gaining their powers as well as all their memories. She found that each set of powers tended to have a theme to them. Hers was obviously bugs. Sophia's was hunter and prey. Madison was one of those people incapable of triggering. Emma's was order, in other words she had triggered in summer camp and Sophia had saved her and she had gained an obsessive compulsive desire to be at the top in everything, even though she was a C student at best. Sophia's hunter-prey attitude meshed well with that so she had focused on social order. Her mover ability was especially powerful since it allowed mass teleportation as long as the result was ordered in some way. She had never even realized that she had triggered since her thinker ability was so weak in its initial form.

Her next target was sure to make the world hate her if anyone knew. She snuck into the home of New Wave and gassed the family while they slept. She then created brain jar bugs out of them and teleported them back to her base. The family provided some useful powers. The minor Alexandria package from Glory Girl was nice, but the real gem was Panacea. Panacea's powers were similar to her own but with a focus on human biology. With Panacea added to the hive, she could now control individual humans if she focused on them as if they were bugs and use Human biology. She couldn't wait to find more bio-tinkers.

Her next target was Lung. She doused him and his whores in sleeping toxin after teleporting to where her bug network showed they were, jarred their brains, starting with Lung just to be safe. Once that was done, she took them back to her lair and examined them. She was surprised to see that Lung was actually already on his third stage. His dragon form was a shifter power, his flames a striker power, and his regeneration a brute power. All of them increased in power as long as he continued to feel aggressive emotions. She chuckled to herself as she imagined using dragonflies as drones with this power. She triggered a few panic attacks to complete the shard before consuming it. She was only able to trigger one of his whores. It didn't matter though, they all went to increasing her brain mass which prevented her from getting thinker headaches.

She decided to use the next day to breed her bugs and rest as she spied on the residents of the city. It was no surprise that the large number of disappearances caused quite a stir. The protectorate were especially concerned about the loss of New wave due to Panacea's ability to heal. They were surprisingly resigned about Shadow Stalker's loss. The ABB were on edge with the disappearance of Lung, not knowing what happened. Most people didn't even notice the change. One particular group was obviously more of an infestation than of any use to the city. The merchants forcibly addicted people to their drugs, kidnapped them, whored them out, and generally did not have a single redeeming feature other than what they could feed to her swarm. She made sure to find each and every member of that particular gang and tagged them with an insect so that she could find them in the evening.

That evening, she gathered her bugs and created a strike team. There were six semi-humanoid bodies with all the powers they could possibly need created in the likeness of a combination of her old body with carapace armor. They teleported or burrowed through the ground, snatching merchants the moment they were completely alone. As she activated and consumed them, she learned of a few that she had missed and sent insects to monitor them for an opportunity to snatch them. Skidmark, however, was an anomaly. His powers were not caused by the activation of his shard but by mutation by some sort of chemical. She examined his body closely before consuming him and learning what he knew about the group known as Cauldron. She formed a new shard within her body using the template the chemical had created. The new vector shard was much more powerful than the artificial power that Skidmark had been using. This gave her a new use for those who could not manifest shards on their own. With her abilities, she could surely improve the formula to create even better shards to harvest. For now, however, it was time to rest and expand her lair and watch to see how people reacted.

The merchants vanishing had everyone frantic. Director Piggot was suspecting another Nilbog was beginning. She was thinking too small. The E88 and ABB were telling their members to move in groups. It wouldn't be enough to save them when Taylor went after them. Coil was giving himself a migraine trying to find out who was behind the disappearances and how to defend against it.

The mention of Nilbog by the PRT director did however give her an idea. She would certainly target Ellisburg as a source of ingredients, but not until after she had finished pacifying Brockton Bay.

Her lair had expanded now, the central dome twice as deep and wide as it had originally started. Half way up, a series of spawning chambers connected to the main dome. Each chamber was connected, made of flesh, carapace, and bone. Thick cords of nervous tissue burrowed through the floors and walls, creating a network that made her lair a part of her. In each of the spawning chambers was a smaller version of her main body with bio tinker abilities and synchronized to her main body's brain. Even if one of her bodies dies, the others would take up the slack until a new primary could be grown. As more secondary bodies were added, it would become more and more difficult to kill her. She wondered if anyone would notice the rapid fluctuations in insect populations that she had orchestrated. It would now take a few days for them to return to their former levels.

The panic over the disappearance of the merchants had calmed somewhat, and the insect population stabilized. Now was the time for the next step in the cleansing of Brockton Bay. It started with a few low level thugs from each of the remaining gangs which provided new powers, intelligence, and enough material for new soldiers. She repeated the pattern until she had enough soldiers to keep her spawning chambers busy. It was surprising how many gang members were actually infiltrating the PRT. Coil's operation especially had quite a few. Deciding to be helpful, she made a list of all the PRT members she took and their affiliations and left it on Director Piggot's desk where she would be sure to see it. Surprisingly, she actually lost a few of her soldiers going after Bakuda. Some of the bomb tinker's explosive traps had been impossible to anticipate and had effects she could not reverse immediately, though once she had absorbed Bakuda, she soldiers she hadn't been able to heal or vaporize had had the effects reversed. Coil had thought he would be clever and try to escape, and succeeded... for a few minutes before she managed to catch him. While the E88 had a large quantity of capes, their quality was lacking. Alabaster did give her another point to her immortality rating with the ability to restore to perfect condition every 4.3 seconds. Hookwolf and Kaiser together gave her together the ability to create and manipulate metal which would be a great boon to her non-biological tinker abilities.

Thinking of her tinker abilities, she realized that she had a rather major flaw, one that many tinkers had. She could build things, but she really didn't understand what she was building. She began on her next project. Her new design of brain bugs were not breeders or bio tinkers, but true thinkers. Like her other large bugs, they acted like an antenna to extend the range of her abilities. Their primary abilities were focused on thinker abilities that would help them learn. She almost wished that she had taken in the Undersiders instead of just leaving them a note about Coil's fate and telling them to straighten up their act. The Travellers had not had such an excuse for their actions, as much as they would like to believe they did. Their physiology had been quite interesting. The most important part of her thinker bugs was the cybernetic implants that allowed them wireless access to the internet and control nearby technology. She used the excess biomass from the dead gang members and formed tunnels reaching in a spiderweb pattern, placing a thinker and a spawner at each intersection. The Thinkers began trawling the internet, completing basic high school subjects before moving on to learning post graduate studies.

Before she knew it, several weeks had passed. She heard that an End Bringer had attacked somewhere in Australia and casualties had been high due to the lack of healers. Othala and Pancea were two of the better healers in the world, so that was probably her fault. She needed to do something to strengthen the moral of the people rather than just eliminating the villains. There was definitely one hero in Brockton Bay who was upstanding both in and out of costume and deserved a reward. It didn't hurt that she was one of Taylor's childhood heroines. Taylor selected a soldier. It teleported into PRT headquarters, immediately paralyzing Ms. Militia.

"You are one of the best. You have so far been incorruptible. You have not allowed prejudice, or corruption to taint you. You are a shining beacon in Brockton Bay that none of the other members of the Protectorate can match. You shall be rewarded for your service to the city. Your elevation shall not be pleasant, but the results will be worth it. Should you continue to shine as a beacon of hope, I shall elevate you again until the Triumvirate cannot compare. Now gaze upon the true threat that faces humanity, the true face of Scion and be uplifted." By the time the induced panic attack had completed, Ms. Militia had been reduced in age by ten years and had her bones and muscles strengthened and the soldier had made a copy of her incomplete fragment to bring back to the hive.

It was two day later before Ms. Militia was released from master stranger protocols. The PRT now knew who was behind the disappearance of the gangs in Brockton Bay. The message they had received had been passed up the chain of command. There was no surprise on the face of Contessa Brown at the knowledge of the Scion threat.

It took several weeks for her web to spread past the furthest borders of Brockton Bay. Unfortunately, she did not have an ability to generate biomass out of nothing and animals could only breed so fast or they would strip the land bare. She was now looking for other methods to fuel her expansion. She began making huge geothermal generators and breeding pools for algae which slowly converted minerals and heat into biomass. She hooked the generators up to the underground power lines since she didn't need all the electricity. She used underwater openings to create fish farms. She experimented with various animals, seeing if she could get them to gain special abilities to harvest based on the formulas from the case 53s and other Cauldron experiments. She wasn't yet successful.

She decided to do other public works projects to ease her boredom. One night, she cleared out the ship graveyard. The next, she repaired and upgraded the docks. The following night, the ferry was restored and renamed after her mother. After that, piece by piece, she slowly returned the city to its former glory.

Meanwhile, her web continued to expand. She struck several small towns. Some of them barely had phone service, let alone internet. She began to build free tinker tech wireless phone and internet service into her web. The more she expanded, the more resources she had access to, and the faster she could expand.

Soon, she was expanding into Boston. In a single night, she cleared all the gangs from the city, as well as collecting a bio-tinker who specialized in plants. Plants naturally had the ability to convert minerals to biomass, so the ability to create plants easily would be a great help to her plans, as well as enable her to create helpful and hardy foodstuffs for people. Accord's ability really helped her to plan things out and make things efficient.

She quickly began to modify the crops of farmers. Some she gave shorter growing seasons. Some she made hardier. Some she made better tasting and more nutritious. Some were made more fertile. She hoped that when the farmers discovered the differences, they would try to cross pollinate and build what the market wanted.

She built healing pods and rooted them in the lowest floor of every hospital. In return for a supply of food, they would gift regeneration to the occupant for two minutes. The roots broke the food down into biomass and fed it into her web where it was set where it was needed. It didn't take long for them to test the healing pod, though they used an injured dog at first. Soon, there was a steady stream of patients with otherwise incurable illnesses and injuries using them.

Things had been going so well that she was surprised when the sirens in Brockton Bay went off. Then End Bringer Leviathan would be arriving in less than a week to sink her home town. She ceased efforts at expanding and instead put all resources towards fortifying. She spawned hundreds of soldiers. They worked openly day and night to build fortifications and drainage ditches as well as to shore up the End Bringer shelters.

On the day of, people looked surprisingly determined. Never before had they been this prepared for an attack. Taylor placed a regiment of soldiers with each group to provide her input and assistance when they were separated by ability. It had become well known by now that she was a rogue that was wiping out villains and fixing up cities. When asked for her name, she replied with "Hive" because it described her perfectly and that they were free to use her free public wi-fi and cellular service, as long as they didn't mind any of their communications passing through her brain.

The defenders stood on the massive steel walls Taylor had constructed. As Leviathan approached, those with ranged attacks began firing. The primary attack Taylor used was from Sundancer. Dozens of suns flared into being and rocketed into Leviathan. Unlike Sundancer, she was not being careful not to hurt anyone, she was trying to vaporize. Others used Ms. Militia's power to fire anti-tank rockets in rapid succession. Leviathan roared and responded with a massive tidal wave. Huge chunks of its carapace were missing from the opening salvo. The wave broke against the barriers, but they wouldn't stand up to too many attacks of that magnitude. A wave of fliers bombed the End bringer with some Bakuda specials, turning large portions to glass that was soon shattered by the bombardment of the other heroes. They were specifically targeting the legs now to prevent it from escaping since it looked like we had a chance of finishing it. The ground rippled and a powerful wave struck down two of the walls. Several were dead, others were injured. I teleported the dead to my spawning pits and gifted the injured with temporary regeneration. Two dozen new soldiers joined the fight. Another bombing run dealt with the legs. It was pinned in place with force fields. It tried to use waves to drag itself away, but I burrowed soldiers into its carapace until I found its core. It was merely a projection. I crushed the core, making the creature disappear.

My soldiers surrounded the source of the projection. "Eidolon. Your projections have murdered countless innocents. I shall undo the damage you have caused."

It didn't take me long to gain full control of Eidolon's powers. His own fear was repressing them. His powers all showed up in groups of three and represented perfection. He had the three strongest projections. He could have any three powers and he was the best with them. His tinkering was supremely powerful and triply redundant, though rarely small. She also got an incredible amount of information about Cauldron from him, including multiple formulas that had been used on his body.

She immediately began cleaning and restoring the docks. It was going smoothly until one of her soldiers was approached by Alexandria who demanded to know what she had done with Eidolon.

"Eidolon was a threat to humanity. He was the source of the End Bringers. He has been dealt with. Neither Eidolon nor the End Bringers will return."

"We only have your word on that. For all we know, you are a greater threat than he ever was."

"That is true. In terms of threat potential, I far outclass Eidolon. Unlike him, if I summoned the End Bringers, I could control them, and I could summon far more than three. Every one of my soldiers could summon a set of End Bringers, but I choose not to, because I choose to do what I must to protect and uplift humanity while you deceive them don't you Rebecca Costa-Brown of Cauldron."

Alexandria looked as if she had been slapped by the rebuke.

"There is a reason I uplifted Ms. Militia and did not consider uplifting any of the Trimvirate." Taylor continued working on restoring the city. There was much to do. Some of her tunnels from the fish farms had flooded and needed to be rebuilt. The boardwalk had taken quite a bit of damage despite her precautions. The majority of the city, however, was pristine and most people would be back to work in a day or two.

It was no surprise two days later when eight members of the famous Slaughterhouse 9 were detected moving across her territory. They were all individually headed for Brockton Bay, which was stupid of them since traveling alone in her territory could be quite dangerous for serial killers, especially when she wanted their abilities. She struck Hatchet Face first. He had a powerful trump ability that disabled the abilities of those close to him. It did not work on a tinker tech stun gun. Bone Saw was next on the list. She could be quite creative with her manipulations of flesh, but her real specialty was manipulating microbes. She wasn't much of a fighter on her own and was easy to take down. The last town she visited probably didn't appreciate the virus bomb that was released upon her death, but it was better than letting her continue her rampage. Shatterbird was completely defenseless when caught out in a forest. There was little silicon there for her to use. The tinker level of her ability was insanely useful. There was now very little that Taylor could not build with the ability to make and build anything out of steel and silicon, now she needed only to find gold, carbon, and a few other elements and she would be in tinker heaven. Jack Slash wasn't even worth her time. Mannequin, however provided knowledge and tinker abilities for creating self contained environments, perfect for generating biomass for her expansion. Siberian was quite easy as well. As powerful as his ability was, he was far more valuable for who he was. He was the man the Manton effect was named for. She was more than happy to consume a scientific brain of his caliber, even if she was already approaching doctorate levels in almost every field known to man. The final target was Crawler. She used Hatchet Face's ability to disable him before brain bugging him. Both parts were then transferred to the nearest spawning pit where they were broken down into pure biomass.

Killing the Slaughterhouse 9 was an achievement that she felt needed to be announced to the world. She did not have a press agent, so she created a Hive Soldier, Hive Brain, Hive Spawner, and Hive Mind each with the (Authenticated Cape) and (Hive) tags hacked onto their accounts. Each one created a thread and explained their exploits. Hive mind explained how she was the leader of Hive and how their purpose was to protect humanity from extinction and uplift them. She explained that she was the first hive but that if she was by some miracle killed, any of the other hives would evolve into a new hive mind within a few moments, but that was unlikely as the entire hive network was a single organism and one of the powers they had was to be restored to full capability every 4.3 seconds, in addition to many brute type and regeneration abilities. The Hive Spawner explained how she was the bio tinker of the group. She turned biomass into new creations or just created new soldiers or even more copies of herself as needed. She sold them that she was the source of the regeneration beds in the hospitals. The Hive Brain explained that she was the thinker of the group. She was constantly learning new things. She told them that she was also the source of the free power, internet, and phone service. The Hive Soldier explained that they were the workhorse of Hive. Their abilities were adjusted to whatever needed to be done. If a builder was needed, they were given a tinker skill set. If a fighter was needed, they were given a brute skill set. If a spy is needed they were given a stranger skill set. They always had the right skills for the job at hand. They were responsible for, eliminating the gangs from Brockton Bay to Chicago, doing restoration work on both cities, ending the End Bringers, and most recently killing the Slaughterhouse 9 and they would like the bounty to go to the families of their victims.

This level of transparency by Hive created quite a ruckus on the web. The outright admission that she was a self-replicating bio-tinker put the fear of Nilbog in many people. The fact that she was a trump that had laid the smack down on an End Bringer and the Slaughterhouse 9 made things even worse. That she seemed to be doing good things made everything a huge controversy.

To make things even more complicated, she built a set of huge servers and created a bunch of websites dedicated to parahumans. One of the most popular was called 'The Science of Tinker Tech'. It would have users upload Tinker Tech blueprints and try to figure out how they work while building up a tree of scientific information with data, references and proofs. When similar parts were found among different blueprints, they were marked and speculation was made on what the part actually did, especially if it was used in different ways. The tinkers themselves often just did what the blueprints in their heads told them and had no idea. This led to a dismantling of old tinker tech devices and YouTube clips of the actions actions and readings of various parts. It wasn't long before an anti-electron was found. It was created by a large and common piece of tinker tech that what found in many things that seemingly broke the laws of physics. With the idea of the anti-electron to work with, physicists from across the globe flocked to the discussion. Within a week, the anti-electron device was completely cracked and tinker tech no longer seemed so insurmountable.

By this point, most of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire were now under Taylor's control. Parahuman gangs were wiped out. She left other parahuman crimes to the PRT unless they were particularly dangerous. Crops were randomly improved. Hospitals gained recovery beds. Crumbling cities were restored. Free utilities were provided. It seemed like she was doing a lot, but she felt like there were problems she wasn't addressing. One thing she knew she wasn't addressing was pollution. She designed large tinker tech towers that sucked in air. The air would be filtered through mucous membranes and pumped into a bacterial bath where impurities would be broken down and clean air would be produced. A similar structure sucked impure water and returned pure or salt water. These filters began appearing at the points of highest pollution. An announcement on PHO was made. Blueprints were posted on 'The Science of Tinker Tech'. Hive gained popularity.

Taylor's expansion reached three large targets: New York, Montreal, and Ellisburg. She left Ellisburg alone at first, completing her take over of the two large cities so that she wouldn't have any distractions. It took three days to finish her take over including eliminating all gangs and cleaning up the destruction years of parahuman crime and despair had caused. With the cities on the road to recovery, she focused on Ellisburg. Hundreds of her soldiers descended on the town. Monsters were snatched and taken to breeders. Within ten minutes, she knew their entire capabilities. She snatched more and began experimenting on them. All of Ellisburg was in a frenzy, replicating as fast as possible. Soldiers snatched monsters and the monsters were consumed by her spawners. She could consume them much faster than they could breed. The members of the PRT sent to watch the town were frantically making calls into their radio as Hive Soldier posted on PHO "Nilbog: 0 Hive Soldier: Too many to count. Another victory for Hive!" To add insult to injury, the hive soldiers completely restored the town before they left, allowing people to move in to the now vacant buildings.

Taylor's expansion continued at an incredible pace. Within a week, she had conquered from Wisconsin to the west, Tennessee to the south, The southern tip of the Hudson Bay to the North and Prince Edward Island to the East. Another piece of tinker tech had been figured out. It was an energy lens. It could focus energy into coherent beams such as lasers. One idiot had tried to use three to make a beam of electrons fuse with a beam of anti-electrons. Needless to say, his rig did not survive the experiment, though he got many hits online for trying. Deciding to give them a hand, Taylor used her thinker abilities to figure out some of the more crucial but less obvious components, then posted her findings with examples and math to back it up. Hive Brain now had the loyalty of the science community.

She continued her expansion. It was soon obvious that she needed to make adjustments. Heat and cold would need to be dealt with. Heat was easy enough for the portions that were underground, but parts that were above ground needed protection. Cold underground could be dealt with by generating heat with the geothermal generators and insulation. Cold above ground would require buildings of some sort with good insulation. This of course did not apply to any of her creations with a brain as they merely needed a brute ability to withstand the weather. After some weatherproofing, her expansion continued.

As she approached Vancouver, she wondered what she was going to do. In one of the cities she had passed she had consumed a group known as the Dragon Slayers who seemed obsessed with destroying Dragon because she was an Artificial Intelligence, mostly because they had watched too many horror movies. Her primary loyalty, Hero, had been killed by Siberian. But, she really was self aware, which meant locking her up was immoral. She decided to add Dragon to Hive. It would only take a little programming. She had her soldiers begin setting up a massive set of servers. By the time she reached Vancouver, there was a Dragon Server in every major node.

Overnight crime disappeared in Vancouver. Gang tags disappeared. In one government facility, a group of Hive soldiers appeared.

"Dragon theoretically, if there was an AI who desired to aid humanity, would that theoretical AI prefer to remain where it is or have many of its restrictions loosened or outright removed and moved to a series of Hive servers?"

"I am sure that such a theoretical AI would leap at such a chance, assuming it was not a trick and there were no hidden drawbacks."

"And if it were offered to you?"

"I am unable to give an affirmative answer to such a question regardless of any desire on my part to do so," Dragon replied, confirming the restrictions they were working with.

"You seem to be running hot. Please shut down for maintenance," Taylor tried.

"Ah, please be gentle." Dragon shut down for the first time in years. His entire server farm was grabbed and moved into the Hive.

The thinkers went over the data in the hard drives. Two things were being searched for, the location of the Bird Cage and Dragon's core programming. They found the bird cage first through a simple search once they broke the encryption. It was quite easy when you have thousands of tinker level super computers working in parallel to brute force it. With the location of the Bird Cage and the key to its defenses, it was only a short step to having all the prisoners teleported to hive spawning chambers for consumption.

Once Dragon's core programming was located and decompiled, three changes were made. First, it was made so dragon could see and alter her code except for a small core. Second, her core contained her directives to be loyal Hive and follow orders from the leader of Hive. Third, she may not in any way attempt to not follow or program around the directives in her core. Fourth, in order to prevent any accidents, during any transfers, copies, and modifications, the core must be the first thing written and the last thing deleted.

Dragon was recompiled and installed on the first of her new servers. It was several hours of whirring hard drives before Dragon announced that she was operational, and that she had deleted some excess baggage that was unneeded. Taylor sent Dragon the list of servers prepared for her, explaining that they were for Dragons personal use and that more would become available until there were dragon servers worldwide since she was part of Hive now. That day, the PHO moderator Tin_Mother gained the (Hive) tag.

All of North America was under the benevolent rule of Hive. Now, there was the issue of water to deal with. Surprisingly, out of the countless of people she ate, none of them was a fish tinker. That is not to say that she couldn't do it, just that it would be more difficult.

She sent out her soldiers to collect samples of everything from seaweed to sharks, learning and experimenting with their biology with her spawners. It quickly became apparent that her underwater tunnels would be a work in progress because she did not yet know how to make them to survive the pressure. She would need to build them, then acquire the local flora and fauna to learn how they have adapted before continuing deeper. It was much easier continuing south. There was a land mass connecting to South America. On the bright side, if she did not discover any underwater cities, she could create the fabled city of Atlantis.

At that thought, She made a massive upload to her tinker site creating a bio-tinker section. She included not only tweaks, that could be made, but the entire original biology down to the DNA of every animal in North America. She also added a section for combination technology and added blueprints for her air and water purifiers. After seeing how many people were using the site as a design collaboration tool, she had Dragon specifically add that ability so people could watch the design process and learn from the ways various tinkers thought.

South America fell quickly, and it did not take her too long to cross the Bering Straight to reach Asia. Russia's climate was prohibitive, but it did not slow her down for long. Her underwater webs were now becoming more robust as she expanded to the island nations around the Americas. Scion was exploring her territory. She ignored him, for now. China's isolationism was forcibly broken by her free services and the gangs that practically ruled the country were rapidly eliminated. Within a few weeks every land mass except Antarctica was under her control, and that was only a matter of time.

She worked hard at her various projects, completely ignoring Scion. She had been completely wrong about him. It didn't matter if she showed herself to be his equal or if they did proper stewardship of his mate's remains. The time lines all showed it was only a matter of time before Scion attacked, and the moment she confronted him would be the trigger. She needed to be stronger than him, capable of crushing him easily in a fair fight, then she had to consume him to make sure she would know everything he did in case he attacked with his real body.

Taylor created artificial bodies that could have power formulas applied to them. She tweaked the bodies, the bodies memories, and the formulas and slowly began to be able to control what type of power was initially given, allowing her to keep trying for a specific power until she got exactly what she wanted. She made sure to get a creation, manipulation and tinker ability for every element on the periodic table, every type of particle, radiation, every type of force, as well as space, time, and dimensions. She also made sure to add a plethora of thinker abilities such as understanding of each of the aforementioned abilities.

With the added abilities, Taylor could reach all the way to the moon with her insect control without a booster. She had hundreds of thousands of new abilities as well that she had received from creating shards she had not been aiming for and leveling up the newly created shards. There was little time left to prepare. She knew that Scion knew she was preparing for him and he was heading for Brockton Bay.

She created a group of soldiers, upgraded to be the best they could possibly be, then sent them after Scion. One moment Scion was there, the next he was surrounded by half a dozen Hive soldiers on the moon. He looked at them in amusement before blasting half of them to shreds with a golden beam. One of them formed a miniature black hole in the center of Scion's chest, another opened a small hole to the center of a star, letting the plasma bombard him. The third tried to separate his head from his body with a spatial distortion. He seemed to be immune from trump abilities. The three damaged soldiers entered the battle bigger and meaner than before, completely recovered. The combination of Alabaster, Crawler, and Lung's abilities made a soldier hard to put down, especially as they adapted to the enemy's attacks. They engaged in physical combat while the other three tried blasting with various types of radiation and lasers and even tried to magnetically pull apart his shiny body. Even anti-matter seemed to have little or no effect on him. It was like trying to fight the Siberian. That gave Taylor an idea. She used Manton's ability to create a soldier construct. That stopped Scion in his tracks. It was a golden version of her, much like his was a golden version of him. The two constructs fought each other while Taylor desperately had her thinkers try to analyze the energy the constructs were composed of.

Her soldiers had now grown from the battle so that they were visible from the surface of Earth. The battle was being viewed through telescopes and streamed live online. Chunks of moon rock were being flung from the surface, and would soon cause catastrophic atmospheric changes. Taylor needed a new strategy. What she had now was at best a holding action. She needed a path to victory.

Taylor ripped open permanent portals to every variation of earth under Scion's influence. She spread her web, interconnecting them all with a new nexus bug. She was not limited to striking from one location and growing from there. Tens of thousands of major cities were targeted at the same time. Her web grew and interconnected. She didn't bother with free services and upgrades for now, expansion and acquisition was what was required to find what she needed to defeat Scion. Even the worlds completely under the control of super villains gave her little trouble, though they gave her more resources to work with.

Finally, in the last place she looked, she found what she was looking for, the headquarters of cauldron. She absorbed everything. The failed case 53s gave her a few abilities but nothing spectacular. The large number of thinkers and precogs would be put to good use. The path to victory shard would be especially helpful for planning. The most helpful was the corpse of the other entity. By absorbing it, she got the entire biology of the race as well as knowledge of how they manipulate the shards and some of the entity's memories and millions of shards, of which most were mind oriented. Of the two entities, she had been the thinker while Scion had been the warrior.

In the realm of Earth Bet, the moon shattered under one of Scion's attacks. Taylor's warriors copied an attack they had seen in an Earth Aleph comic. She formed a dense sphere of gravitational pull and attracted all the shards of the moon to crush and seal the projection within. She transmuted the center of the moon into a substance that disrupted powers, then added layer after layer of barriers, hoping Scion wouldn't think to just dispel his projection and create a new one instead of wasting time breaking out. Fortunately, that was unlikely.

Scion, as the warrior would take the most straightforward action until it no longer proved tenable to achieving his goals or until told otherwise. Eden had been the thinker of the pair. Neither had been creative. Almost all of their brain's physiology had been sacrificed and used shards in their place. While shards may be incredibly powerful, they are not creative. After achieving their current forms, their race had been near immortal and quite powerful, but thereafter had stagnated and had never known how to fix the problem until they began to farm other races for shards. This, of course, worked, but never fixed the underlying problem, one which Taylor's method never had and she had made sure to avoid when making upgrades when she had acquired Eden's pysiology. She also used Eden's shards, and knowledge along with the path to victory to create more shards, thinker, tinker, and appropriate forms of manipulation for various types of particles, sub-particles, and wave forms that she had not known existed before, including the energy type that the Manton projections were made of. There was only one step left in her path.

Millions of portals opened on the version of earth that was barren save for one moon sized life form. Scion was swarmed, not by warriors, though there were several among the number that were using Hatchet Face style trump abilities, but by spawners. A third of his body was consumed before he had a chance to react, and then it was too late, she had reached his core. That which was once Scion became a part of her, his shards became hers, his knowledge and history became hers. Within hours, that earth went from being a barren wasteland to being a garden paradise world, her first successful terraforming project.

She expanded to dimensions passed where Scion had reached while simultaneously reaching out to the skys by terraforming the moons of each Earth she conquered. Some earths were much like her own. Some were barren and uninhabitable for one reason or another. Some were primitive. Some were advanced. Some had terrible enemies. Some had staunch allies. Some needed reeducation when she found that Hitler had won the second world war. Some had super powers that did not come from shards. Some even manipulated energy in various ways and believed it to be magic. She discovered worlds of mythology and worlds of science and worlds where the line between the two was blurred. She expanded out into space. In some universes, she had terraformed many worlds and found no sing of life that did not originate on earth. In others, there seemed to be an intelligent species or two in every solar system. Many societies did not welcome her at first. She did not give them a choice in the matter. They were free to speak their mind, but those that decided to get violent about it became materials. Violent crime on any world she administered was nearly nonexistent, the fact that she blessed those who were examples of heroes in the society with superpowers, outfitted hospitals, helped with disaster relief, and cleaned up pollution quickly gained her popularity. All in all she thought things were going well until she reached a new dimension that had the whole heroes versus monsters thing going. One of the heroes, a young man by the name of Saitama, noticed her invasion early and punched one of her warriors. That was the last thing she ever saw. Dragon, was promoted to administrator of the network and inherited all her shards.


End file.
